​A stopped clock can be right twice a day, so on occasion an evangelical fundamentalist preacher might stumble onto something true about space aliens and Nephilim just by pure chance, even if he doesn’t really understand what he has discovered. That’s the case with Tennessee pastor Charles Lawson, who is currently being ridiculed by political liberals for his ridiculous claim that most scientists have abandoned the theory of evolution but are too afraid of political correctness to admit it. Nevertheless, he correctly stumbled onto the idea that the Nephilim and demons are equivalent to space aliens in the mythology that passes itself off as the ancient history of the Earth.

Lawson is not just a fundamentalist, but one who believes that the King James Bible alone contains God’s unerring Word. Lawson is, to put it mildly, one of those pastors, the kind that watch Ancient Aliens and think that it’s a pretty good documentary about demons. He has preached sermons about how the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is going to initiate the End Times prophecies of Revelation, how the Vatican is working with space aliens, and even how Admiral Byrd traveled to Antarctica to commune with alien-demons in the underworld. All of these are regular Ancient Aliens topics, to which he gives a Christian spin.

In a recent sermon making the rounds of liberal news sites this week, Lawson takes a moment to obsess about Californian’s Mt. Shasta, which he describes as a paranormal hotspot and an outpost of Lemuria, based on a news article he quotes at length. The Lemurian claims derive ultimately from Frederick S. Oliver’s late nineteenth century “channeled” volume A Dweller on Two Planets (1905), which imagined Mt. Shasta as the last outpost of Atlantis. Although Dweller was more or less fiction, the Lemurian Fellowship, which counted David Childress among its early acolytes, adopted it as fact and thus wove Lemuria into the story.

But I digress.

Our friend Pastor Lawson sees the stories about Mt. Shasta’s connection to Lemuria, Bigfoot, and UFOs as reflecting emanations from a lost high tech civilization, whose spirits continue to haunt the mountain. “Before the Flood,” he said, “we had three highly advanced civilizations: Number 1, Atlantis. Number 2, Lemuria. And Number 3, Hyperborea. There may be others, but these three highly advanced civilizations have sent across the Flood to this time span today the spirit guides that are able to illuminate people on the world, the paranormal world, UFOs, Bigfoot, little green men, and aliens.”

I’d like to see where in the Bible we find Atlantis, Lemuria, and Hyperborea, but that’s just me. Apparently in the world of far-right Christianity all of the ancient astronaut and fringe history material isn’t just true but testifies to the truth of the Bible thanks to the flexibility of the Nephilim, who can be bent to serve any and every magical and supernatural purpose. Here Lawson isn’t technically saying anything different than what Ignatius Donnelly and his predecessors did in ascribing the civilization of Atlantis to the Nephilim, though the emphasis is quite different. Donnelly wanted to secularize the Flood, while Lawson wants to spiritualize science.

Lawson also takes time out to note that John Podesta, an advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, is “fixated” on space aliens and their attempts to communicate with human beings, as was mentioned in yesterday’s New York Times profile of Hillary Clinton’s own UFO interests. Lawson doesn’t make much of this, but he does use it as a segue to talk about how the idea of aliens communicating with us from above resembles the religious idea of angels communicating from on high. This leads him to his most ill-founded claim, and one he seems to have derived from mistaking Ancient Aliens for a science show.

After claiming that “many” scientists have abandoned the theory of evolution as a “fairy tale,” Lawson states: “Instead of dealing with Darwin, they jettison Darwin, and now they’re looking up and past and they’re getting into the spirit world and the paranormal world—and the two of them, they complement each other—and they begin to get into something that their scientific books know nothing about.” What might that be? Ghosts. Nephilim ghosts. He thinks scientists are secretly worshiping aliens and that they don’t understand that these aliens are the ghosts of the Nephilim, or what he terms “spirit beings” from the realm of aerial demons. Don’t laugh too hard—Christians have long held that demons operate in the sky, as told, for example, in Ephesians 2:2 and by St. Augustine in the City of God8.15.

Essentially, Lawson seems to think that the “scientists” he sees talking about aliens, interdimensional beings, and ghosts on the History Channel—which is to say the frauds that masquerade as “experts” despite having no discernible knowledge or skills—represent the opinions of actual scientists!

The capper? Lawson concludes with a discussion of Bigfoot and UFOs be explaining that they are not physically real but are “deceptions” and spirit beings created by demons. Yes, this is the interdimensional Bigfoot theory dressed up in Christian robes, with demons substituting for aliens.

Is this the kind of bullshit that fundamentalist Christians teach in their churches? If so, it’s no wonder that Ancient Aliens has such a large audience. There is surely something wrong when ancient astronaut theorists, ufologists, and Christian fundamentalists all start from the assumption that Lemurians and flying space monsters are real and then work backward to imagine where they came from. No wonder they all hate scientists so much.

You have hit upon something that has always bothered me. Someone appears on television, babbling on about something and walla....that makes them an "expert". That is the reason I refuse to watch channels like CNN and especially any channel associated with Fox. The History and Discover Channels (owned by A & E) I view as basically entertainment mediums, their "experts" having many times less knowledge of what they are talking about then some members of the viewing public. Mainstream television, since its inception, has succeeded as an entertainment tool and failed, in the main, as an educational tool.

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flip

5/12/2016 08:09:04 pm

Oh please, the same thing happens with books and newspapers and radio. The problem isn't the medium used, it's that people often don't use critical thinking when applied to sources of information. You can point out that the Gutenberg press had the same effect because people took Sitchin's works for real science; but by the same token the printing press gave us Darwin's work too. We need better critical thinking skills overall, not just better TV.

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tm

5/12/2016 11:17:46 am

"I'd like to see where in the Bible we find Atlantis, Lemuria, and Hyperborea..."

Have you looked in Two Corinthians? ;)

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DaveR

5/12/2016 11:48:07 am

We may wind up with a Christian end of days suicide cult on Mt. Shasta soon.

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Only Me

5/12/2016 11:48:37 am

I've met people like Lawson. For example, I knew a guy that wholeheartedly believed all literature outside the Bible was the work of Satan. I'll be perfectly honest; these types scare the shit out of me.

We hope parents can teach their kids that everything they see on TV or the internet isn't true; now we have folks like Lawson claiming the opposite.

Fundies have their sacred text and their related mystical beliefs. They could argue that since most fringe gunk isn't in the Bible, it isn't real, and so we can ignore it. However, the Bible teaches them to beware of false prophets, ergo, false prophets are real. So they engage this worthless dreck as an adversary, rather than as a fraud or joke.

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Only Me

5/12/2016 06:09:34 pm

That's a possibility, but I think there might be something more, I just haven't put my finger on it yet.

I don't consider myself a fundamentalist and I sure don't divide all of reality between the sacred and the profane. Like I said, these types of people scare me.

flip

5/12/2016 08:19:36 pm

I'm going to suggest that the increasing scientific knowledge that undermines more and more of religious claims means that some people feel the need to try to bolster their beliefs with something else... only there's no science to bolster with so they resort to abusing science, condemning it outright, or in this case, by grabbing hold of other supernatural claims. Fire and brimstone preaching is about fear, so what does it matter if you're going on about demons or alien abductions?

well, at least he's telling them that the stuff is to be ignored because its evil, while we tell them to ignore it because its false or unhealthy.

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terry the censor

5/15/2016 05:02:33 pm

@Christine

He is not telling them to ignore it, He's using this stuff to fill them with fear,

Ken

5/12/2016 11:54:53 am

A friend of mine sent me this lecture recently about the "Biological Underpinnings of Religiosity" in which a popular Stanford biology prof puts forth the theory that religion stems from schizophrenics and 'typo-schizophrenics' (partial crazies) and that the classification extends to believers of all types - bible, ufos, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI

It starts to get good about 10 minutes in.

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flip

5/12/2016 08:50:41 pm

Yeah that's bullshit. It's misunderstanding mental illness, contributes to stigma, and lumps people with actual disabilities into a group that for the large part don't have deal with.

I don't entirely agree with all of what Carrier says, but this post has some good discussion about this hypothesis:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/7121
It also links to posts by Miri Mogilevsky which I find much more agreeable from the standpoint of a fellow sufferer of mental illness. If nothing else at least read Miri's stuff as it puts into perspective the quite ableist attitude that religion and mental illness are the same things.

Signed, someone who is both atheist/skeptic and on the schizophrenic spectrum.

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Time Machine

5/12/2016 01:26:57 pm

Believe it or not, mainstream Christianity is equally indigestible and full of rubbish. It's all made-up.

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Uncle Ron

5/12/2016 03:53:13 pm

"Is this the kind of bullshit that fundamentalist Christians teach in their churches?"

In a word, No. Fundamentalists believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible. Period. However there seems to be a trend today to identify every crackpot who includes the word "God" in his ranting as a "fundamentalist" and thereby smear all sincerely religious people as somehow mentally impaired. I am not at all religious (in fact I've spent a lifetime debunking the supernatural in general and religion in particular) but I know a lot of people who believe that the Bible is literally the Word of God, and most of them are decent folks trying to live a responsible life. The idiocy preached by Lawson, and others like him, disqualifies him from being a true fundamentalist Christian; he's just nuts. Despite what certain contributors to this blog wish to believe, Christianity teaches a lot of wholesome principles which, if followed by everyone, would make the world a better place.

I'm sure now, that Time Machine, or one of his aliases, will cherry-pick some hellfire & brimstone from the Old Testament and treat me to another one of his incoherent tirades supposedly proving how evil religion is. Whatever . . .

Having grown up in the Catholic tradition, I'm not particularly familiar with the many different flavors of evangelical or how they run their services. I certainly cast no aspersions on people who live principles lives following their faith traditions, but a lot of the crazy bullshit we hear from self-described evangelicals or fundamentalists is pretty new, most dating back only a few decades.

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David Krein

5/14/2016 10:36:40 pm

1843-MAR-21: William Miller, evangelical and founder of the Millerite movement, predicted that Jesus would come on this date. A very large number of Christians accepted his prophecy.

1844-OCT-22: When Jesus did not return, Miller predicted this new date. In an event which is now called "The Great Disappointment," many Christians sold their property and possessions, quit their jobs and prepared themselves for the second coming. Nothing happened; the day came and went without incident.

That incident was huge in its day as it drew in hundreds of thousands.

Lesson learned: don't drink their coolaid!

Day Late and Dollar Short

5/12/2016 04:43:18 pm

"Despite what certain contributors to this blog wish to believe, Christianity teaches a lot of wholesome principles which, if followed by everyone, would make the world a better place."

People can form perfectly wholesome, moral principles that fall within what Christianity would consider appropriate without the use of the Bible.

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Uncle Ron

5/12/2016 09:23:00 pm

I completely agree. I think I have developed an adequate moral compass without the fear of retribution in some imaginary afterlife. I meant that the Bible would still be a "good book" to live by if we took out all the supernatural stuff.

Incidentally - the average religious person doesn't have the slightest comprehension of the actual power that would be possessed by the god they imagine.

Time Machine

5/13/2016 12:36:25 am

It's called secularism and rationalism - as embraced by the French Republic. Religion is called a cult in France. And they are the abiding principles of the United States of America, a country existing without any religious primate,

V

5/23/2016 01:28:52 pm

I think that the point was not supposed to be that you can ONLY get those things from Christianity, but rather that Christianity DOES teach those things, too. There are many so-called Christians who don't do those things, either.

It is absolutely possible to be an extremely ethical, moral person without any kind of religion. It is also possible to be an extremely ethical, moral person WITH religion, and I think THAT was the point Uncle Ron was trying to make.

When we completely demonize some group, we deny the humanity of other people, and that? THAT is immoral, my friends, pretty much no matter what system of morals you've internalized.

Time Machine

5/12/2016 05:15:03 pm

"Fundamentalists believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible"

Biblical-based skeptics are no different to the Scott Wolters,

It's like a believer in the Loch Ness Monster criticising Uri Geller.

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Time Machine

5/12/2016 05:23:41 pm

Fundamentalist Christian belief is flawed and as an example I go back to the accounts of early Church history as given in the epistles and the Acts of the Apostles.

In the epistles there are massive arguments between Peter and Paul over whether or not non-Jews could become Christians. Peter is against it.

This friction expands into arguments over Mosaic Law and how Peter supports it and uses it as an argument against non-Jews becoming Christians. Paul argues that the Mosaic Law became obsolete and those who support it are not real Christians.

In the Acts of the Apostles it is Peter who converts non-Jews to Christianity.

Time Machine

5/12/2016 05:35:21 pm

Note there's no dispute over the divinity of Jesus Christ between Peter and Paul in the epistles. Paul would have mentioned that and used it as ammunition against Peter.

Over 160 years of critical Biblical scholarship was wasted arguing that there were 2 different Christian beliefs in Jesus Christ. The acceptance or rejection of the Mosaic Law was to do with the acceptance of non-Jews into Christianity, not over differences of opinion about the divinity of Jesus Christ,

kennethos

5/15/2016 12:20:01 am

Jason, kind of surprised, again, by the bias and religious ignorance you reveal here. Congrats…New Age folks have their silliness, and so do some in religious circles, even fundamentalists! Thought you were aware of all of that already. There are some folks that do go for the foolish stuff. I’ll bet, though, that there are many, many churches around you that actually teach very sound stuff…they just don’t attract your attention because they’re not controversial. Granted, you’ve said you were raised Catholic, and presumably aren’t active, or lapsed, or whatever, but it’s just disappointing when you ignore most of the churches that are “normal”, and only focus on the few that aren’t. For a “skeptic” whose critical thinking I typically greatly appreciate, you fit into a stereotype of a progressive who doesn’t understand sane religiosity.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.